716 research outputs found

    Review of Morphosyntactic Categories and the Expression of Possession

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    This paper is a review of the book Morphosyntactic Categories and the Expression of Possession, a collection of 11 papers all dealing with the cross-linguistic realization of the concept of possession through various morphosyntactic constructions. After a short introduction, the review summarizes the contents of the volume and provides an evaluation

    Decliticization in Old Estonian

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    Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2016

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    Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2016 initiates a new series of collective volumes on formal Slavic linguistics. It presents a selection of high quality papers authored by young and senior linguists from around the world and contains both empirically oriented work, underpinned by up-to-date experimental methods, as well as more theoretically grounded contributions. The volume covers all major linguistic areas, including morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonology, and their mutual interfaces. The particular topics discussed include argument structure, word order, case, agreement, tense, aspect, clausal left periphery, or segmental phonology. The topical breadth and analytical depth of the contributions reflect the vitality of the field of formal Slavic linguistics and prove its relevance to the global linguistic endeavour. Early versions of the papers included in this volume were presented at the conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages 12 or at the satellite Works

    Superlative Morphology from Syntax: Slavic Nai-/Naj- and Internal Definiteness Marking in Old Lithuanian

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    It has long been noticed that the Slavic superlative prefix nai-/naj- comprises two components: *na + *i. The former can be identified with the preposition Sl na ‘on(to)’ which developed an intensifying meaning when used as a prefix. The origin of the second component, on the other hand, has not been determined satisfactorily so far. This paper argues that it can be identified with the Slavic definiteness marker. Drawing upon a typologically common pattern, it is supposed that at a pre-stage of Slavic superlative was derived from the comparative with the aid of a definiteness marker. Definiteness of a noun phrase in earlier Slavic and its neighbouring branch Baltic was denoted by adding a definiteness marker of pronominal origin to the right edge of the adjective. As data from Old Lithuanian show, this morpheme was originally not bound to the position following the adjective. When an adjective/participle was preceded by a prefix/preverb, it could be placed between these two elements. I argue that this state of affairs is also reflected in the Slavic superlative prefix naj-/nai-. Based on the proposed scenario, the article discusses certain general issues related to the externalization of trapped inflectional morphology and the phenomenon of endoclisis

    Clitics in the wild

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    This collective monograph is the first data-oriented, empirical in-depth study of the system of clitics on Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. It fills the gap between the theoretical and normative literature by including solid data on variation found in dialects and spoken language and obtained from massive Web Corpora and speakers’ acceptability judgements. The authors investigate three primary sources of variation: inventory, placement and morphonological processes. A separate part of the book is dedicated to the phenomenon of clitic climbing, the major challenge for any syntactic theory. The theory of complexity serves as the explanation for the very diverse constraints on clitic climbing established in the empirical studies. It allows to construct a series of hierarchies where the factors relevant for predicting clitic climbing interact with each other. Thus, the study pushes our understanding of clitics away from fine-grained descriptions and syntactic generalisations towards a probabilistic modelling of syntax

    Old Church Slavonic roots of the present-day Polish anticausative system

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    W niniejszym artykule zostało zaproponowane wyjaśnienie istnienia różnic pomiędzy prefiksacją syntetycznych i analitycznych czasowników antykauzatywnych w języku polskim na podstawie historii ich rozwoju w językach słowiańskich, z uwzględnieniem staro-cerkiewno-słowiańskiego. Zaobserwowano, że syntetyczne czasowniki antykauzatywne przyjmują łatwo prefiksy zmieniające aspekt czasownika, ale nie jego znaczenie leksykalne, podczas gdy takie ograniczenie nie istnieje dla formacji analitycznych. Sytuacja ta wywodzi się z systemu, jaki istniał jeszcze w staro-cerkiewno-słowiańskim, w którym analityczne formacje były podstawą strony "zwrotnej", wchodzącej w skład systemu stron charakterystycznych dla odmiany w tym języku. Wskutek tego formacje analityczne otrzymywały te same elementy prefiksalne co czasowniki oparte na identycznych rdzeniach, ale realizujące stronę czynną, to jest te prefiksy, które również mogły istotnie modyfikować znaczenie czasowników. Inaczej działo się w przypadku syntetycznych antykauzatywów. Już w czasach wczesnosłowiańskich były one elementami leksykonu i nie miały innych skojarzonych z nimi form czasownikowych, lecz jedynie leksemy przymiotnikowe i rzeczownikowe (dla których to form system słowiański nie oferował licznych wzorców prefiksalnych). Wskutek tego czasowniki syntetyczne wzbogacały się o prefiksy realizujące tylko opozycje aspektowe, a nie funkcje słowotwórcze. W niniejszym tekście historia obu grup czasowników została prześledzona od czasów wczesnosłowiańskich poprzez fazy pośrednie do dziś.In this paper we will present a theory on the source of prefixation differences between Polish analytic and synthetic anticausatives. Analytic anticausatives are freely prefixed with superlexical, lexical and 'pure perfectivizer' prefixes, while synthetic anticausatives show propensity for 'pure perfectivizers', if indeed they are prefixed at all. We have looked for a source of this distinction in OCS anticausative morpho-syntax. We claim that OCS analytic anticausatives are formed within the limits of the voice system of OCS as middle voice word-forms. As such, they have the same rich prefix inventory as other verbal stems that have the same roots, with some of the prefixes introducing changes in verbal lexical meaning. On the other hand, synthetic anticausatives are already at this time members of the OCS lexicon, mostly without any related verbal forms, but sharing roots with nouns and adjectives (for which prefixation is not a frequent operation in Slavic languages). The prefixes appearing with synthetic anticausatives have the function of realizing the viewpoint aspect, rather than word-formational functions. We have traced the distinction between the two classes of anticausatives from the OCS times to Present-Day Polish, quoting also some intermediate stages in the history of these verbs

    Balto-Slavic accentual mobility

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    Thomas Olander’s dissertation (2006) offers a useful introduction to the history of Balto-Slavic accentuation supported by an impressive command of the scholarly literature

    First attestations. An Old Church Slavonic sampler

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    Corpus linguistics and computational approaches to language constitute an important trend in today’s linguistics, and Slavic historical linguistics is no exception. This chapter serves as an empirical touchstone for the entire volume. Using parallel Greek and Old Church Slavonic data from the PROIEL/ TOROT treebanks, the first attested state of the phenomena covered in the volume is explored, including their relationship to the Greek sources. The chapter covers accusatives with infinitives (Gavrančić this volume, Tomelleri this volume), absolute constructions (Mihaljević 2017), deverbal nouns (Tomelleri this volume), prepositional phrase connectors (Kisiel & Sobotka this volume), numeral syntax (Słoboda this volume), the ordering of pronominal clitics (Kosek, Čech & Navratilova this volume), tense use in performative declaratives (Dekker this volume) and relative clauses (Sonnenhauser & Eberle this volume; Podtergera 2020). The chapter presents corpus statistics on each of the phenomena, and a brief discussion of the possibility of influence from Greek. The chapters that provide their own studies of Old Church Slavonic data (Fuchsbauer this volume on “mock” articles, Pichkhadze this volume on syntactic blocking and Šimić this volume on negative concord), are not replicated, but brought into the discussion when relevant

    Wolfgang U. Dressler–Oskar E. Pfeiffer–Markus Pöchträger–John R. Rennison (eds): Morphological analysis in comparison. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Vol. 201

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    Wolfgang U. Dressler - Oskar E. Pfeiffer - Markus Pöchträger - John R. Rennison(eds): Morphological analysis in comparison. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Vol.201.John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2000, 253 pp. ; Stephen C. Levinson : Presumptive meanings. The theory of generalized conversational implicature. The MIT Press, Cambridge MA&London, 2000, 480 pp. ; István Kenesei(ed.): Crossing boundaries. Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999, 301 pp
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